Pulling A The David Cook For Charity

When I was in NYC, I was invited to the Bloganthropy Dinner which was thrown for bloggers who use their blogs to make the world a better place. Clearly, they mixed me up with another Aunt Becky. Perhaps Uncle Jesse’s wife from Full House? Not certain. While I was there, I was entered into a raffle, and while they were announcing the winners, I prayed like hell that I wouldn’t win anything, because I need stuff like I need to lose more brain cells.

I totally won.

I won a prize generously donated by Cold Stone Creamery. Pranksters, I won free ice cream for an entire year. A YEAR of ICE CREAM. See, Cold Stone loves charity. I love charity, too (shut your face, Pranksters) and they’re a huge supporter of the Make A Wish Foundation.

CHARITY, FUCK YEAH.

September is Make A Wish Month, Pranksters, and if you go into Cold Stone September 30th between 5-8 PM, you get a free 3oz of Kate’s Creation. Kate’s Wish was to create the World’s Largest Ice Cream Social. Cold Stone? Made that happen. Turns out Cold Stone has been supporting Make A Wish foundation for years.

Ice Cream + Charity = WIN.

I’m highly uncomfortable accepting such a prize. SO, Pranksters, I’m giving it away. For charity. Originally, I was going to have you pull a John C. Mayer** for charity, but when I think “charity” I don’t think “John C. Mayer.” And I am remiss to give John C. Mayer any more publicity, especially since I have effectively won at Internetting. LOOK:

I Win At Internetting!

Last night, I asked The Twitter which celebrity we should choose as our charity mascot and the only person who got multiple votes was The David Cook. That’s handy, because, Pranksters, did you know that The David Cook was my best friend as a child?

Okay, so some of you may say that The David Cook is a common name, and perhaps this The David Cook who won American Idol Season 7 is not the SAME David Cook who was my playmate in the sandbox. Perhaps this “The David Cook” isn’t the same The David Cook whose father was my dentist. Perhaps “The David Cook” is such a common name that I had a hard time deciding how to name “The David Cook” for this prank as famous people named The David Cook are about a dime a dozen.

And you would be right.

Well, since The David Cook WAS my friend as a child, I have now decided that all people named “David Cook” are my BFF for life, which is highly unfortunate for everyone else besides my former BFF David Cook, named “David Cook,” (which, a handy Google search tells me, is a lot). Besides, The David Cook has a Twitter dog. And his Twitter dog and I are getting married.

According to The David Cook’s Wikipedia page, The David Cook does a lot of charity work, plus, since we’re fake BFF and all, I’m naming this prank after him.

For The Pulling a The David Cook for Charity Prank (I wonder if Urban Dictionary will allow us to enter this one, too):

We each choose our own charity to Pull a The David Cook on. We’re choosing a charity this time, not a celebrity.

Write a blog post about your charity.

Stuff it with the words, links and SEO phrases like we did for the original John C. Mayer post and aim to get our blogs on page 1 of Google for that charity.

If you don’t have a blog, you can write a public note on Facebook with the same rules.

Link your blog post back here in the comment section and I will add it to the big mother-trucking post (that post hasn’t been written since I am still frantically looking for a charity of my own).

Stumble, Digg, tweet your posts. Because, obviously.

One entry per person, but you can Pull a The David Cook for charity as often as you’d like.

You have until noon CST on October 10 to get your posts up and entered into the Big Mother Trucking Post (will go up tomorrow).

Winner will be chosen via random number generator on October 11.

The aim is to bring some awareness to these charities, their mission, and hopefully in the process, make some connections. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard through you guys about some rad charity or resource out there I didn’t know existed.

Let’s use social media for powers of wicked awesome. Plus, the potential to win FREE ICE CREAM.

Let’s get our prank on, Pranksters.

Okay, and since I am not only annoying but stupid, too, I forgot to mention that if these charities are a good fit for Band Back Together will be added to the resource pages for the site. That’s a huge win for both the charities and for Band Back Together.

P.S. I need a charity to get behind for tomorrow’s post. HALP. ME.

Charity, Fuck Yeah.

**A brief history of the Pulling a John C. Mayer Prank. It began when I wrote a blog letter to John C. Mayer wherein I begrudgingly told him that after I’d spent many years waging war against him, I hated to admit that I found him witty, clever, and hilarious. I used his name about a gazillion times, for comedic value only, and realized in doing so, I’d inadvertently beaten out his website and Wikipedia page on Google.

THEN, we turned it into an Internet Prank. I taught everyone how to use SEO to beat Google’s algorithm and we targeted celebs to Pull a John C. Mayer on. It was amazingly full of the hilarious.

75 Responses to Pulling A The David Cook For Charity

I have two loves when it comes to charity: education and health care for preemies and infants. I’ve been involved in education nonprofits for the past six years, and my daughter was born at 26 weeks last August. So here are two ideas for you for tomorrow.

http://www.oplp.org. A nonprofit in Oakland, CA that provides Family Reading Night events to students and their families at low-income schools throughout OUSD. Families are fed, students receive free books, and everyone learns about the importance of reading at home everyday.

Here’s a charity to consider. The fistula foundation provides women in Africa free medical care to correct fistulas usually caused by childbirth. This care literally changes their lives. The charity has received 4 stars for 4 years in a row from Charity Navigator.

Suicide Prevention. I only recently heard of this place, and you can bet I’ll probably find some spare money to help when I can.The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is on the web at http://www.afsp.org/

http://www.donorschoose.org/ Donors Choose. Public school teachers post projects that need funding, and you can pick which specific projects you’d like to support. And if you give $100 to any one project, you’ll get adorable thank you letters from the kids.

Crohn’s And Colitis Foundation of America: http://www.ccfa.org Crohn’s is such a horrid thing, and I hate that people have to suffer with it.

If you are against donating to religious charities, then here’s one for you: Foundation Beyond Belief http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ FBB sponsors ten charities at a time in a range of categories (child welfare, animal rights, peace, education, etc) and you can allocate your donation to those you prefer, or to be divided evenly. It’s a thoughtful, positive humanist organization for good ol’ fashioned doing-of-nice-things.

These are great. I need to amend my post. These charities will be vetted and added to the resources list on Band Back Together. That site gets MAJOR traffic which means the charities will benefit tremendously.

This is such an amazing idea. You Aunt Becky are full of the Awesome ideas. Now my question is, may I use Band Back Together for my blog for charity, since I do not have a blog of my own yet? If not I will do the Facebook note.

Also does anyone know of a good charity for Aspergers/Autism? I will research myself, but any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

TY very much http://www.aspiehelp.org/ is actually the one I chose to write about. My oldest daughter was diagnosed with Aspergers when she was 5. So it is something that is near and dear to my heart. And that is so great of you to take photographs of children with needs.. There is a special place in Heaven for you.

While there are oh so many charities I love, the one that holds a special place in my heart right now is Band of Parents (which kind of goes well with the name of your new website, right). It’s for parents of children with neuroblastoma, the deadliest form of childhood cancer. From their website:

“Our mission is to raise money to further support and accelerate the research of the talented and dedicated team of doctors and scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), the institution that treats more cases of neuroblastoma than any other hospital in the world.” http://www.bandofparents.org/our_cause_a/158.htm

A friend from college’s daughter has this terrible cancer, and she is fighting so bravely right now.

also, is the ice cream thing in someone’s name? or if we win it, can we raffle it off for said charity?

and i only support non-human charities. which sounds horrible, but you know. you have to choose something and stick to it. i’m thinking that if i blog and win, i might give the year of free ice cream to them to raffle off. because i’m thinking of going with a small shelter in new york, called little shelter. because they’re an awesome no-kill shelter. and they do really great work.

but i won’t be putting that blog up quite yet. since i have another one getting ready to roll. i’ll get it up soon, aunt motherfucking becky, i promish.

I am so glad you explained who David Cook was because I had no clue and was going to have to google him. clearly I do not love The Idol.

also: congrats on your #1 googles! fuck yeah!

also also: you should make a song like in Team America. only it will be Charity! Fuck Yeah!

also also also: my fave charity is Habitat for Humanity. I work with them every year in New Orleans building houses for thousands of displaced people after Katrina. in most places, Habitat builds maybe a few houses a year. in NOLA, they build around 100. so much work still needs to be done and they run on man hours, volunteers, and donations.

I’ve recently started giving to the SAMFund.org (Surviving and Moving Forward Fund) charity. Having friends who have survived cancer I have seen how difficult it can be for them to get back on their feet from just the debt. This charity helps young people who have survived cancer to get past it and do something with the life that has just been saved.

My mother has lived with diabetes since she was ten years old, so I feel like I should do a post about http://www.jdrf.org/ for this. I think it’s a fantastic idea. With all the obesity in children these days, they are being diagnosed with Type 2, which is not only more treatable but is even preventable. Not always so for Type 1, Juvenile onset diabetes. This might be a good one Band Back Together as well, so I’ll try and do a cross-post, though I haven’t written anything for that one yet.

I was born with a clubbed foot. This is one of the things covered by the March of Dimes, but I found a charity in the UK called Steps whose focus is clubbed feet and other lower limb conditions. Their motto is they don’t take walking for granted. http://www.steps-charity.org.uk/

In the spirit of that motto, for the second year in a row, I’m walking in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3 Day for the Cure in San Francisco this weekend. I know Komen for the Cure is a ‘hot’ charity, but breast cancer runs in my family, and I can walk even if it isn’t easy, so I do. Of course, it’s a 60 mile walk over the course of 3 days, so it’s not easy for anyone. So I may do a post about that one too. http://www.the3day.org/goto/tara.roquemore is my personal page on the event website, and the general charity page is http://ww5.komen.org/

Thank you Aunt Becky! This is a great way to use our Pranking skills for Good. After all, with Great Power comes Great Responsibility.

Sometimes, it’s a good thing to drop the snark and do something good. Snark is great because laughing is way important. But using our power to do good? That’s full of the win. If we can pull this off, I will be so, so proud. I sincerely hope that we can.

While I have long supported MoD I am in love w/ a new charity, Beads of Courage. When children go to the hospital they start strings of beads & earn beads w/ treatments & milestones. http://www.beadsofcourage.org

Hmmm . . . what charity to choose? So many decisions. I do work with victims of domestic violence. Maybe that one. But I also do work with education. Grr. It’s hard to pick!! It’s much easier to be snarky.

WOOHOO! You made it to number 1 and number 2! I am so happy for you. I will be pulling a THE David Cook for charity soon, as soon as I am on my own computer. I will do my best just for you my favorite Aunt Becky.

Imma try to get something together on BB2G about the local childhood cancer group (they used to be called Capital Candlelighters but they are changing their name to Badger Childhood Cancer Network — http://www.capcan.org). Their slogan always makes me cry: “…because kids can’t fight cancer alone!” My family has gone to a number of their events, including run/walks. And through them my son has Hero Beads, the string of beads documenting his journey from diagnosis to treatments to the MRIs he gets once a year.

Leanne – thsnks for the project Linus link! I just found out about the organization via a path of websites I haopened to be reading one night. They have 2 chapters in Alaska, which I thoight was pretty cool.

Leanne – thsnks for the project Linus link! I just found out about the organization via a path of websites I haopened to be reading one night. They have 2 chapters in Alaska, which I thoight was pretty cool.

So, I’m fudging a little, since I’m not sure if this is a charity per se. But it’s a not-for-profit working in it’s unique way for peace. It was founded by Ambulance Drivers following WWI, and has been moving along ever since. It’s the largest Volunteer run organization in the world, second only to the Red Cross. And that, and because it’s the best organization, is why I did a post today about AFS (afsusa.org)on my blog.

I am a mom of a beautiful nine-year-old girl who was recently diagnosed with type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. There is nothing that she did to get this horrible disease and there is no cure. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that strikes suddenly and lasts a lifetime. My goal is to help JDRF, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in their goal to accelerate the cure. JDRF is the largest charitable funder of and advocate for diabetes science worldwide. Support the Rockin’ Peeps as we join JDRF in their efforts in finding a cure.

I chose Little Patriots Embraced,(http://www.littlepatriotsembraced.org/Home.shtml) which is locally based but serves military families across the country. They are 6 years old, and relatively small, but they do an amazing thing. I think they could use the publicity.